Like
Parent, Like Child? Tracking Childhood Problems from Parents
to their Children in a Dutch Longitudinal Study

Many
studies have reported associations between parenting
behavior and children's problems. However, a longitudinal
study that started with a large general population sample
of Dutch children in the 1980s has made it possible
to test predictive associations from the childhood behavioral
and emotional problems of people in one generation to
the subsequent childhood problems of their offspring.
From an initial sample of children who were assessed
with CBCLs completed by their parents, 271 of the original
subjects completed the CBCL for 424 of their 6- to 18-year-old
offspring 24 years later (van Meurs et al., 2009). Multilevel
modeling was used to test associations between CBCL
scores of the parent and offspring generations. It was
found that parents' childhood CBCL scores significantly
predicted their own children's scores on Internalizing,
Externalizing, Total Problems, and all syndrome scales
except Thought Problems. For the Delinquent Behavior
(now called Rule-Breaking Behavior) syndrome, prediction
was significantly stronger from mothers' childhood scores
than from fathers' childhood scores, especially for
prediction of sons' problems. Among the possible explanations
for continuity between problems reported for children
from parent to offspring generation, the authors suggested
that the "genetic vulnerability that the children
may have inherited from their parents interacts with
the nonoptimal emotional environment that their parents
provide, which may trigger the development of problem
behavior in the children" (p. 142).